Dan Rather in Crisis

By

MRC Staff

September 29, 2004 - 2:01pm

On September 8, 2004, Dan Rather cited “exclusive information, including documents” to justify major CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes
stories alleging that George W. Bush shirked his duties when he was in
the Texas Air National Guard in the 1960s and 1970s. Within a few hours
of those documents being posted on CBS News’s Web site, however,
typography experts voiced skepticism that the documents had actually
originated with their alleged author and Bush’s former commanding
officer, the late Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian. As the evidence mounted,
Rather stubbornly clung to the idea that his story was bulletproof, and
he derided critics as partisans and Internet rumormongers. When he
“apologized” on September 20, Rather would not concede that the
documents were forgeries, only that he and CBS could “no longer vouch
for their authenticity.”

CBS’s Revolving (Democratic) Door: Josh Howard, the top producer for the Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes
— the CBS program that used forged documents to attack George W. Bush’s
National Guard service — previously worked for two liberal New York
Democrats, then-Congressman Stephen Solarz and now-Senator Charles
Schumer back when he was in the New York state assembly. And, after he
started working at CBS, Howard made large contributions to the Solarz
campaign, Bob Novak revealed in his September 25 column. (CyberAlert, September 28, 2004[1])

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black:
Two-and-a-half weeks after running its hit job on Bush using forged
documents, CBS News decided that it would be "inappropriate" to air so
close to the presidential election a 60 Minutes story about
how the Bush administration relied on forged documents to justify the
Iraq war, the Associated Press reported September 25. That and viewers
would laugh at CBS’s chutzpah. (CyberAlert, September 27, 2004[2])

Rather vs. Republican Thornburgh: On the September 22 CBS Evening News,
Dan Rather continued to refuse to describe those memos as forgeries,
merely as “documents CBS News has not been able to authenticate,” as if
validation might be just around the corner. The New York Times
revealed Rather was angry that a Republican, former Attorney General
Richard Thornburgh, was one of the men appointed to independently
investigate the forged memo scandal: “Mr. Rather considers Mr.
Thornburgh a confounding choice in part because he served two
Republican Presidents, Mr. Bush’s father and Richard M. Nixon, with
whom Mr. Rather publicly clashed.” (CyberAlert, September 23, 2004[3])

Mary Mapes, Liberal Matchmaker: On the September 21 CBS Evening News, Dan Rather again failed to apologize to President Bush for his bogus 60 Minutes
story based on forged documents, but the Evening News did acknowledge
that Rather’s producer, Mary Mapes, put the Kerry campaign in touch
with CBS’s untrustworthy source, Bill Burkett. Reporter Bill Plante
read from CBS’s official statement forbidding bias: “It is obviously
against CBS News standards to be associated with any political agenda.”
Meanwhile, Rather told the Chicago Tribune that he still thinks the memos are real: “Do I think they’re forged? No.” (CyberAlert, September 22, 2004[4])

The Slime Before the “Apology”: Before Dan
Rather admitted his own errors in pushing a fraudulent anti-Bush story
based on partisan sources and forged documents, he and his network
chose to point fingers at others, falsely suggesting that CBS was
promoting “truth” in the face of “partisan political ideological
forces.” Of course, the “ideological forces” condemning CBS’s sloppy
journalism were correct. (Worst Of The Week, September 21, 2004[5])

Dan Rather’s Sorry Apology: While he did
acknowledge it was “a mistake” to have used forged memos in his attack
on George W. Bush, Rather on the September 20 Evening News
refused to describe the memos as forgeries, offered no apology for
impugning critics — who turned out to be accurate — as “partisan
political operatives” and “partisan political ideological forces,” and
he conceded CBS approached Bill Burkett despite Burkett’s well-known
Bush-hating animosity. And the father of CBS producer Mary Mapes, who
engineered the flawed 60 Minutes hit piece, told a Seattle radio station: “I’m really ashamed what my daughter has become. She’s a typical liberal.” (CyberAlert, September 21, 2004[6])

So Much for Dan’s Thrust: Dan Rather’s
notion that “the thrust” of his report was unchallenged was destroyed
September 17 when ABC News interviewed retired Brigadier General Walter
Staudt, the man whom the memos claimed was “pushing to sugar coat”
George W. Bush’s National Guard performance record. Staudt told ABC he
did not give Bush any favored treatment. But in the next morning’s Los Angeles Times, 60 Minutes executive producer Josh Howard tried to blame the White House for CBS’s sloppy reporting, and the September 19 Washington Post
exposed the new “experts” CBS touted as bolstering their case. “I’m not
an expert and I don’t pretend to be,” former typewriter repairman Bill
Glennon confessed. (CyberAlert, September 20, 2004[7])

More Erosion: Dan Rather did not talk about the forged memo scandal on the September 16 CBS Evening News,
but his case looked ever weaker. FNC’s Jim Angle interviewed Texas Air
National Guard veterans who contradicted claims made by Rather and
ex-secretary Marian Carr Knox on 60 Minutes the night before,
and “none of the experts used by CBS are accredited by the American
Board of Forensic Document Examiners,” CNN’s Jeanne Meserve reported on
NewsNight. Meanwhile, CBS News veteran Andy Rooney told the New York Daily News he thinks the memos are fakes, adding: “I’m surprised at their reluctance to concede they’re wrong.” (CyberAlert, September 17, 2004[8])

Fake but Accurate: On the September 15 60 Minutes,
Dan Rather offered a sleazy new standard for journalists: Using phoney
evidence is okay if “the major thrust” of the story might be true.
Rather trumpeted how while the 86-year-old ex-secretary of Lt. Colonel
Jerry Killian said CBS’s memos were not authentic, “she told us she
believes what the documents actually say is exactly as we reported.”
Later that night, Rather ludicrously boasted to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story.” (CyberAlert, September 16, 2004[9])

CBS Disregarded Experts, Challenged Laura Bush: ABC’s Brian Ross reported on the September 14 World News Tonight
that “two experts hired by CBS News say the network ignored concerns
they raised prior to the broadcast about the disputed National Guard
records.” But over on CBS, reporter John Roberts wondered why President
Bush wasn’t taking those memos seriously: “The President has yet to
weigh in on new documents about his National Guard record made public
last week by 60 Minutes.” Roberts also chastised First Lady
Laura Bush for doubting CBS’s memos were authentic: “Laura Bush offered
no evidence to back up her claim, and CBS News continues to stand by
its reporting.” (CyberAlert, September 15, 2004[10])

Even CBS’s Expert Jumps Ship: Just days
after Dan Rather cited handwriting expert Marcel Matley as confirming
the authenticity of those memos, Matley told the Washington Post
that he could not vouch for CBS’s memos. A September 14 article by
Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz quoted Matley undermining Rather:
“There’s no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them.”
On the September 13 Evening News, however, Rather highlighted
a typewriter repairman as evidence “that the documents could have been
created in the ‘70s,” although he did not establish whether the Texas
Air National Guard possessed the expensive equipment required to do so. (CyberAlert, September 14, 2004[11])

More Evidence Contradicts CBS: On the September 11 Good Morning America,
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos relayed that retired Major General Bobby
Hodges, “who CBS described as their ‘trump card,’ now says that he
thinks the documents are not authentic and he does not believe the CBS
story is true.” The Dallas Morning News reported that retired
General Walter Staudt, “the man named in a disputed memo as exerting
pressure to ‘sugar coat’ President Bush’s military record, left the
Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was
supposedly written, his own service record shows.” And the Washington Times
on September 12 quoted the reaction of Earl Lively, the director of
Texas Air National Guard operations during Bush’s years of service:
“They’re forged as hell.” (CyberAlert, September 13, 2004[12])

Sticking By His Smear: On September 10, Dan Rather responded to charges the memos he cited as proving Bush’s dereliction were forged, telling his CBS Evening News
audience that the memos were genuine and attacking any doubters as
partisan rumor-mongers. “Today, on the Internet and elsewhere, some
people, including many who are partisan political operatives,
concentrated not on the key questions of the overall story, but on the
documents that were part of the support of the story,” Rather
castigated. But his lame defense ignored key challenges to the
documents’ typography and content, and the doubts voiced by the widow
and son of the supposed author, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian.
Instead, Rather chose to repeat his indictment of President Bush’s
National Guard service. Rather arrogantly concluded: “If any definitive
evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we will report it. So
far there is none.” (CyberAlert, September 11, 2004[13])

Double-Standard Dan: After weeks of ignoring
or denigrating anti-Kerry charges voiced by fellow Vietnam veterans,
CBS’s Dan Rather led the September 8 Evening News with
supposed new proof that George W. Bush had shirked his duties as a
Texas Air National Guardsman 30 years earlier: “There are new questions
tonight about President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard
in the late 1960s and early ’70s and about his insistence that he met
his military service obligations. CBS News has exclusive information,
including documents, that now sheds new light on the President’s
service record. 60 Minutes has obtained government documents
that indicate Mr. Bush may have received preferential treatment in the
Guard after not fulfilling his commitments.” (CyberAlert, September 9, 2004[14])

A Question or a Threat? (With Real[15] Video) During an interview with First Lady Laura Bush on the September 2 CBS Evening News
(the last day of the Republican convention), Rather seemed to couch a
threat in the form of a question: “Now that friends and supporters of
the President have raised the issue of John Kerry’s combat record in
Vietnam, do you or do you not think it’s fair now for the Kerry people
to come back and dig anew into your husband’s military service record?”
That was less than a week before Rather used forged memos as evidence
in stories attacking Bush’s National Guard Service. (CyberAlert, September 3, 2004[16])

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